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IMPORTANT FILES ON NORTHERN LIGHTS


هذي مجموعة ملفات تفيدكم في الواجب ان شاء الله 

وادعولي ..






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المكتبة الالكترونية:

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PHILIP PULLMAN'S HIS DARK MATERIALS: ESSAYS ON THE NOVELS, THE FILM AND THE STAGE PRODUCTIONS.
Amy S Rodgers
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?sid=403d846b-de5b-4faa-95b3-2f4ea445dd8e%40sessionmgr4004&vid=1&hid=4212&bdata=JnNpdGU9bHJjLWxpdmU%3d#db=lfh&AN=74616900
التحميل:
http://www.gulfup.com/?HOPGgR 
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'Nothing Like Pretend': Difference, Disorder, and Dystopia in The Multiple World Spaces of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.
 Sarah K  Cantrell
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?sid=7e2caf67-763a-4d57-8586-f37c9d1ba7b8%40sessionmgr4002&vid=1&hid=4212&bdata=JnNpdGU9bHJjLWxpdmU%3d#db=lfh&AN=55199401
التحميل:
http://www.gulfup.com/?TjR2Z3 
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Philip Pullman
 William L Howard
 http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?sid=0ea92e66-bd4a-42a6-96bc-bf88671605fa%40sessionmgr4001&vid=1&hid=4212&bdata=JnNpdGU9bHJjLWxpdmU%3d#db=lfh&AN=103331LM62319790306072

 Biography
Philip Pullman describes himself as a storyteller rather than a writer, a distinction that stresses the primacy of the story and its need to be told over any technical prowess or psychological needs of the author. Praised highly for that narrative ability, Pullman has written prolifically and created a significant opus to much critical acclaim.
Born in Norwich, England, one of two sons of Alfred Outram and Audrey Merrifield, Pullman lived in Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) where his father, a Royal Air Force pilot, died in a plane crash in 1953. Pullman’s mother then left him with his maternal grandparents in Norfolk for two years while she lived and worked in London. He formed a deep attachment to his grandfather, an Anglican clergyman, whose storytelling left a lasting impression on the youth.
Pullman’s mother married an airman friend of his father, and the family moved to Australia for eighteen months, where Pullman remembers discovering comic books and further developing his love of narrative. Eventually, the family moved to North Wales, where he attended school at Ysgol Ardudwy Harlech, Gwynedd. Pullman credits an influential teacher there, Miss Enid Jones, with teaching him to write clearly. He would send her copies of his books throughout his career. He was the first in his family to attend college. In 1968, he earned a bachelor of arts degree from Oxford University, where he studied literature.
Pullman taught in middle schools in Oxford for the next twelve years. Interested less in rigorous standards enforced through testing than in developing his students’ creative imaginations, he recited literature, wrote plays for his students to perform, and effectively served an apprenticeship during these years for his later career as a young adult author. He continued teaching as a part-time lecturer at Westminster College, Oxford, specializing in Victorian literature and folktales.
Pullman believes that young adult audiences are more prone to demand good storytelling from an author than jaded adult audiences. After a brief and unsuccessful foray into adult fiction, he wrote successful children’s books, including the Sally Lockhart series. These novels depict an intrepid young female investigator living in Victorian England. Often exposed to the shadowy underworld of London, she seeks information essential to her identity.
Pullman’s masterpiece, the Dark Materials series, also was marketed for a young adult audience, although Pullman insists that he had adult readers in mind as well. These books, like the Lockhart series, focus on the adventures of an orphaned girl — in this case, Lyra Belacqua. Her determination in Northern Lights to find her best friend leads her on a dangerous journey to save children from scientists seeking to control the universe. In the second book of the trilogy, The Subtle Knife, she joins forces with Will Parry. In the third volume, The Amber Spyglass, she and Will fight in a cosmic battle for supremacy in heaven. The trilogy concludes with Lyra’s coming of age and romantic attraction to Will.
Pullman has been nominated for, and won, many awards. The Ruby in the Smoke was awarded the International Reading Association Children’s Book Award in 1988. The Shadow in the Plate was a finalist for consideration by the Mystery Writers of America for the Edgar Allan Poe Award. In 1996, Northern Lights was selected for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award, the Carnegie Medal, and Children’s Book of the Year in the British Book Awards. In 2001, The Amber Spyglass won both the Whitbread Prize for best children’s book as well as the overall Whitbread Book of the Year Prize, the first children’s work to win this prestigious honor. He won the Nibbles Author of the Year Award in 2002 and in 2005, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
Philip Pullman settled in Oxford with his wife Judith (Speller), whom he married in 1970. They had two sons, James and Thomas.
Essay by: William L. Howard

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CHAPTER 4: Philip Pullman.
 
Millicent  Lenz
 
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?sid=76f3defd-21bd-4aef-b6fc-10daa3244884%40sessionmgr4002&vid=1&hid=4212&bdata=JnNpdGU9bHJjLWxpdmU%3d#db=lfh&AN=24121717
 
 
 التحميل:
http://www.gulfup.com/?4UNJ4D 
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‘A Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven’: His Dark Materials, Inverted Theology, and the End of Philip Pullman’s Authority.
 
Jonathan Padley
 
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?sid=f2c9d9c9-e998-4b36-a8bd-8d297ec3a4f8%40sessionmgr4001&vid=1&hid=4212&bdata=JnNpdGU9bHJjLWxpdmU%3d#db=lfh&AN=18740356
 
التحميل:
 http://www.gulfup.com/?4tpscc
 
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Literary Contexts in Novels: Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass" 

By Sandie Byrne

http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?sid=eb7ccb55-a4b6-4fc3-9eaa-ddc7e1cd0647%40sessionmgr4004&vid=1&hid=4212&bdata=JnNpdGU9bHJjLWxpdmU%3d#db=lfh&AN=23184782


 "Barnard and Stokes were two […] 'renegade' theologians
  who postulated the existence of numerous other worlds like
  this one, neither heaven nor hell, but material and sinful.
  They are there close by, but invisible and unreachable. The
  Holy Church naturally disapproved of this abominable heresy,
  and Barnard and Stokes were silenced."
~~Philip Pullman, "The Golden Compass"
Content Synopsis
"The Golden Compass" is the first volume in a series of novels, "His Dark Materials" (a trilogy to date, but with an additional short story published and a fourth volume promised) which, though initially released by a publishing company associated with younger readers, has proved to be "crossover" fiction, that is, suitable for and equally popular with readers of all ages.
The story is set in a world and time parallel to our own, but with important differences. The power of the Church is absolute, and articulated through a tangle of rival colleges, councils, boards and courts. Ideas which in our world would be explored by scientists are in this world investigated, or suppressed, by theologians.
The story opens in a parallel Oxford, in the Hall of Jordan College. Lyra Belacqua, a twelve year-old girl who has been brought up by the male Fellows of the college, wants to see the innermost sanctum of the Fellows, their Retiring Room. Hiding in a cupboard to avoid discovery, she inadvertently sees the Master of the college poison the wine to be offered to her uncle, the arrogant and powerful Lord Asriel, an explorer who is due to give a talk at the college that evening about his latest expedition. Lyra warns her uncle, who orders her back into the cupboard and tells her to observe the Fellows' reaction to his talk. When we meet Lyra we also meet something inseparable from her. In this world, everyone has a dæmon, a creature in the form of an animal which is invisibly but closely connected to them. The dæmon could be interpreted as the spirit or soul, or anima/animus; in all but a very few cases males have a female dæmon and females male; but it acts as an independent entity. The connection is emotional and affectionate; the actions of the dæmon can express the emotional state of the human, and when the person dies, the dæmon disappears. The dæmons of children shape-shift according to mood or need. Lyra's dæmon, Pan, short for Pantalaimon, can be a mouse and hide in her pocket, or an ermine, his favorite sleeping-form, or a bird, to fly to seek something out, or an inconspicuous moth, as when we first see him. Once the child reaches puberty, the dæmon begins to choose one form more and more often, and by adulthood, when the young adult's character is fully established, has fixed on one kind of animal.
Lord Asriel shows the Fellows three things during his lecture. The first is evidence of the existence of Dust and its relationship to children. Dust particles, invisible to the naked eye, come from the sky in streams. The second is some slides, taken on his expedition to the Arctic region of their world, which show what seems to be a city skyline in the middle of the Aurora Borealis, otherwise known as the Northern Lights. Lyra hears one of the scholar's mention the names Barnard and Stokes in connection with this, but the reference means nothing to her. The third thing Asriel mentions is evidence of what happened to the last expedition to the Northern Lights, the scalped and trepanned head of its leader, Stanislaus Grumman.
The Master of the college had been willing to kill Lord Asriel because he had been warned of appalling consequences should Asriel's research continue; consequences which would involve Lyra. The warning comes from an alethiometer, a truth-measure, one of only six ever made. It is a complex device, and thus very difficult to interpret. The Master knows that something momentous is going to happen, that there will be a terrible betrayal, and that Lyra will be the betrayer. He wants to protect her for as long as possible, but knows that he cannot for much longer.
Lyra is by no means a typical heroine: "She was a coarse and greedy little savage" and has passed her childhood "like a half-wild cat" (37). She is graceless and unkempt, lies, boasts, and steals, but is also brave, loyal, energetic, and clear-sighted. She dislikes being cleaned up, having lessons, paying attention, sitting still, and authority. She enjoys playing on the roofs and in underground passages, crypts, and cellars of the college with her best friend, Roger, the kitchen boy, leading her gang, fighting rival gangs, and fraternizing with the Gyptians (water gypsies) on the rivers and canals of Oxford. But the gangs are diminishing. All over the country children are disappearing. Rumor suggests that they have been taken by the "Gobblers." One day, Roger is missing.
Shortly after Roger's disappearance, Lyra is introduced to the beautiful Mrs. Coulter and told that she is to live with her in future. Before Lyra leaves, the Master gives her the alethiometer, advising her to hide it from Mrs. Coulter. In London, Mrs. Coulter buys Lyra fine clothes, takes her to parties, and makes much of her. She also, however, shows an implacable, even cruel side. When Lyra displeases her, Mrs. Coulter's golden monkey dæmon hurts Pan. Lyra learns that Lord Asriel is a prisoner in the far north, that Mrs. Coulter is working for the Genera Oblation Board of the Church, which she discovers is the origin of the nickname "Gobblers," and that her work involves the capture of children. Lyra escapes Mrs. Coulter and hides in the back streets of London. Two men almost capture her, but she is rescued by one of her Gyptian friends, Tony Costa.
The Costas are on their way to join John Faa, Lord of the Western Gyptians, and they take Lyra with them in their boat, hiding her from the many people searching for her. John Faa tells Lyra the true story of her birth, her 'uncle,' Lord Asriel is really her father, and her mother is a beautiful scholar, wife of the politician Edward Coulter. As a baby, Lyra was given into the care of a Gyptian woman and hidden on Lord Asriel's estates. When Edward Coulter came looking for the child, her nurse fled with her to Asriel's house, where Asriel challenged Coulter to a duel, and killed him. As a result, the courts confiscated Asriel's property and land, and ordered the child to be placed with nuns. Asriel, however, stole her back, and hid her in Jordan College, where the Gyptians have been watching over Lyra ever since. Although Asriel stipulated that Lyra's mother should never be allowed to see her, her mother's position in the machinery of the Church is now so high that she could not be stopped. Her mother, Lyra learns, is Mrs. Coulter.
The Gyptians decide to send an expedition north to rescue the children kidnapped by the "Gobblers." John Faa finds that Lyra is learning how to use the alethiometer, which could help them to find the missing children, and so reluctantly allows her to go with them.
On the journey north, they meet beautiful witches, a Texan balloon aëronaut, Lee Scoresby, an armored warrior-bear, Iorek Byrnison, and what they think at first is a ghost. The 'ghost' is alive, just (in this world an obscene, terrible, unthinkable thing) a child without a dæmon: "A human being with no dæmon was like someone without a face, or with their ribs laid open and their heart torn out" (215). The purpose of the Oblation Board becomes clear. They are the perpetrators of an unspeakable cruelty: separating children from their dæmons. The child, unbearably bereft, dies.
Lyra is captured by hunters and sold to the experimental station run by the Oblation Board. Roger and Billy Costa are among the children held there, and the three find both the place where children and dæmons are separated, and the caged and fading severed dæmons. Mrs. Coulter arrives at the station and the children fake a fire drill in order to release them. Lyra is caught, and she and Pan are put into the separator and prepared for "intercission." Mrs. Coulter stops the process just in time, and Lyra escapes again. She organizes the children into a gang, and they try to fight their way past the guards and their wolf dæmons. In the nick of time, witches, and Iorek Byrnison arrive, and the children escape, only to have to face a long march across the frozen Arctic. Mrs. Coulter nearly snatches Lyra and Roger, again, but a witch clan-queen, Serafina Pekkala, saves them and Lee Scoresby carries them away.
Serafina Pekkala knows that although Lyra believes she came north to find and rescue her friend, in fact she was destined to follow Roger north in order to bring something important to her father. Lyra thinks it is the alethiometer, but in fact it is Roger. Asriel has learned how to harness the immense energy released when child and dæmon are separated. He wants to enter the other world he knows exists, to trace the source of Dust, which he has deduced is an elementary particle; a particle that alters its nature "when innocence becomes experience" (373). Dust, he says, is what theologians call original sin. He has come to the same conclusion as the Oblation Board, though for different reasons; Dust must be destroyed. He tells Lyra that somewhere is the origin of Dust and therefore of "all the death, the sin, the misery, the destructiveness in the world", and goes on: "[h]uman beings can't see anything without wanting to destroy it, Lyra. That's original sin. And I'm going to destroy it. Death is going to die" (377). He severs Lyra's friend Roger from his dæmon in order to release the energy that will open a window between worlds, killing Roger in the process. Mrs. Coulter arrives and is briefly reconciled with Asriel, but refuses to join his cause. He goes through into the other world, and Lyra, knowing that he is wrong; that if the Oblation Board believe Dust to be an evil, it must be good, follows her father.



Historical Context
The story was published in the UK in 1995 under the title "Northern Lights." When it was published in the US, an editor changed the title to "The Golden Compass." Philip Pullman did not acquiesce, but his web site reports that at the time he did not have the clout to do anything about it. The story is more or less contemporary, as we see from the next volume in the trilogy, "The Subtle Knife," which is primarily set in our own world. Though parallel in time, to readers from our world, Lyra's world seems like a mixture of periods, including an all-powerful church with complex church hierarchy belonging to the middle ages or Renaissance; regions yet to be fully explored or "discovered" by the west; early modern to eighteenth-century technology, and a few developments from the nineteenth century (such as hot air balloons).


Societal Context 
 
 
The societal contexts of "The Golden Compass" are inextricably bound up with its religious and technological contexts. The society it depicts is both like and unlike our own, and could be seen as an allegory of and warning to our own society. Within Lyra's world we are shown a number of distinct societies, each providing different ways of interpreting, ordering, and understanding life. The witches are beautiful and magical, and have great longevity, but their society is based on a clan system and riven by political conflict. The bears led by Iorek are strong and loyal, and skilled craftsmen. Their society is organized and effective, but militaristic and oppressive to all but the leaders. The Gyptians are resourceful, able to make and mend and make-do with almost nothing. Their society is family-oriented, and led by wise and experienced elders, but they are on the larger society's lower rungs. The Fellows at Jordan College are scholarly, well-intentioned, and kindly, but isolated, unworldly, and ultimately ineffective. Their society has narrowed down to the confines of college and the books under their noses. The Church is highly effective, and has managed to dominate the wider society, but its own labyrinthine construction weakens it as courts and councils jockey for power, negating each other's actions.
In our own world, this volume and the sequence have received critical acclaim and become bestsellers, bought by and for both adults and children. Michael Chabon, in "Dust and Demons," suggests that much in the novels is of questionable suitability for children, including the complex character of Lyra, but adds that the ambivalent character of the stories and their crossover appeal relates to the themes of the stories themselves (5).


Religious Context
The title of the series comes from Book II of John Milton's epic poem, "Paradise Lost," and refers to the "dark materials" of God; the elements from which he has made the world and from which, if he so ordains, he will make more worlds. Milton was a Christian and a Puritan at the time of the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate, and the subsequent Restoration of the monarchy in Britain. His great poem tells the story of original sin; of the choice made by Eve which led to the expulsion from Eden. It has often been said that Milton inadvertently made Satan the most interesting character in his poem; an energetic and compelling character whose rhetoric is powerful. A parallel character in "His Dark Materials" is the leader of the rebellion against religious authority, Lord Asriel.
Although "Paradise Lost" is a Christian poem, Pullman uses its themes to make the case against organized religion; suggesting that the church has used the threat of damnation and the promise of an everlasting afterlife to keep people in subjection, and that ignorance rather than innocence is the state it desires in its subjects. "His Dark Materials" depicts a parallel "fall" which involves not a choice and a loss of innocence, but rather than a sin to be deplored and expiated for all time, it is a sign of humanity's finally coming of age and abandoning the superstitions and childlike dependencies of its prolonged childhood.
Another important influence is the work of William Blake. Like Blake's poetry and engravings, Pullman's trilogy expresses a mistrust of authority, particularly self-proclaimed and absolute, unfounded authority. The God of this trilogy, "The Authority," an angel of incredible age, is like the authoritarian and aloof patriarch in Blake's poem "To Nobodaddy," an ancient, bearded old man, who has become an excuse for the exercise of earthly powers. The opponent of that God and his Regent, and thus a "Satan" figure, (though for much of the trilogy he doesn't fully understand) has a name reminiscent of one of Blake's rebel angel-type figures, Asriel. In the philosophy of the trilogy, both this God and those who use worship of him as their vehicle of power must be destroyed. Humankind must depend upon itself, not a father-figure; must cease to base its happiness on a belief in future life, and concentrate on truly living this life; must cease blindly to obey the dictates of religion, and work out a true moral code. The trilogy could be seen as a response or alternative world-view to children's fiction with an overtly Christian message, such as "The Narnia Stories" by C.S. Lewis.
In a review published in "The Times", Erica Wager called this "remarkable writing: courageous and dangerous, as the best art should be," and asserted that: "Pullman envisions a world without God, but not without hope" (12).



Scientific & Technological Context
In Lyra's world, Enlightenment rationalism has not become the dominant mode of thought that it has in our own world, and that which in our world would be scientific or technological discourses are in this world closer to the philosophical or alchemical discourses of the eighteenth century and earlier. Technological developments have been made, but there are no internal combustion engines, no nuclear power, and no computers. There are hot air balloons and Zeppelins, but no airplanes; the Retiring Room at Jordan College is lit by lamps, and Asriel's lantern has to be hand-pumped. "Anbaric" lights are relatively rare. As well as technologically developed artifacts, there are also things that in our world would belong in the realm of the mystical, mythical, or magic: the alethiometer; the witches and their pine-cloud flying sticks; sentient bears; a "spy fly" device; and, of course dæmons. Ideas and theories which we now take for granted, such as quantum mechanics, chaos theory, the divisibility of the atom, and the possible existence of multiple universes, are heresy in Lyra's world, and those who disseminate them are silenced. Nonetheless, much of the plot rests upon what we would call "real" science.


Biographical Context
Philip Pullman studied English at Exeter College, Oxford, on which he loosely based his Jordan College. While he was writing the trilogy he was living in Oxford, working in a shed at the back of his garden. Before becoming a full-time writer, he was a school teacher for a number of years and later taught trainee teachers at Westminster College, also in Oxford. He was therefore very well acquainted with contemporary and classic children's literature before he began writing it. He has been the awarded several prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children's Book Award, the Astrid Lindgren Award (with illustrator Ryoji Arai), the Publishers' Weekly best Book of the Year Award, and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award (for "The Amber Spyglass," the third in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy), in the first instance of that prize going to a book classified as for children (though read by many adults). Pullman produced illustrations for the first two volumes of the trilogy and small pictures as running heads for the second, to indicate which world the characters are in at the time. These were not printed in the first US editions of the novels, but are present in the 2002 editions published by Knopf.
Complementary Texts
Philip Pullman's, "The Subtle Knife" (1997)
"The Amber Spyglass" (2000)
"The Book of Dust" (the fourth volume in the sequence; forthcoming) "Lyra's Oxford," illustrated by John Lawrence (2003)
John Milton's "Paradise Lost" (1667)
William Blake's "Songs of Innocence and of Experience"
Adaptations
"His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass" (2007) Dir. Chris Weitz
Discussion Questions
1. How does Philip Pullman establish sympathy for Lyra without falling into sentimentality or mawkishness?
  • 2. How well do Philip Pullman's representations create a sense of real children in real childhoods?
  • 3. How is Mrs. Coulter invested with a sense of menace before we know her real purpose?
  • 4. At what point in reading the novel do we realize that it is not set in our own world, and how do we learn this?
  • 5. What are readers' initial responses to Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter likely to be? Do these change later in the novel?
  • 6. At what point in the book do readers learn about Lyra's destiny and why does she not learn of it at the same time?
  • 7. Why is the alethiometer a better and more interesting device in the novel than another prediction device such as a crystal ball would be?
  • 8. In what ways do Pullman's witches differ from traditional representations of the witch?
  • 9. The UK edition of the novel is called "Northern Lights." What is the significance of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) n the story?
  • 10. Some aspects of the story might seem frightening or upsetting for younger readers. How does Philip Pullman handle these?
Essay Ideas
1. Write an essay about Philip Pullman's creation of the dæmon and its importance, not as a plot device but in terms of imaginative writing.
  • 2. Write an essay about moral and other ambiguities of characters in the novel.
  • 3. How does the passage from John Milton's "Paradise Lost" set the themes of the novel?
  • 4. How does Philip Pullman avoid the trap of sentimental anthropomorphism in his depictions of talking animals such as the armored bears?
  • 5. Write an essay about the ways in which science, philosophy and religion overlap in the novel. 
Works Cited
  
Michael Chabon, "Dust and Demons." "Navigating the Golden Compass: Religion, Science and Dæmonology in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials." Ed.
Glen Yeffeth. Dallas, Texas: Benbella, 2005
Gribbin, Mary and John Gribbin. The Science of Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials.' New York: Knopf, 2005
Philip Pullman, "Northern Lights." London: Scholastic, 1995; rprnt, 2001. US edition, The Golden Compass. New York: Knopf, 1996; rprnt, Laurel Leaf, 2003
Erica Wagner, review of "His Dark Materials", The Times (18 October, 
  2000) T2, 12
 
For Further Study
Philip Pullman's home pages at http://www.philip-pullman.com
Random House (USA) has a web page on "His Dark Materials" which includes information on "how to read the alethiometer" and reference to a book "The Science of 'His Dark Materials'" by Mary and John Gribbin http://www.randomhouse.com/features/pullman/index.html
Random House Philip Pullman pages at http://www.randomhouse.com/features/pullman/index.html
~~~~~~~~
By Sandie Byrne




 
 

Saturday, December 07, 2013 / / /
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